1 THEORIES OF CASTE - AN EXAMINATION
1.1 Racial Theory: That caste system evolved to accommodate large variety of tribes into Aryan society during expansion of vedic Aryan territories.
1.2 Political Theory: Caste has been a useful tool for maintaining social order, the vicious form it now maintains though needs much more explanation than what is offered by this theory.
1.3 Occupational theory: Various occupational guilds and other family groups metamorphosed into castes, in India.
1.4 Traditional theory, Guild theory and Religious theory: These theories explain the formation of castes as a singularity in social evolution.
1.5 Evolutionary theory: This hypothesis, in fact, is not a new or different theory. It states, in effect, that over the years, formation of caste is influenced by all above factors.
2 DEVELOPMENT OF CASTE - A STUDY
2.1 The origin and development of caste system therefore narrows down to the distinctiveness, of evolution of Indian society which could cause the natural variations existing in the society transform into castes (as they are now) under the influence of these peculiarities.
2.2 Though the tendency to form social class is present in every society, in this case, the stratification became increasingly stable, crystallizing into castes. With passage of time, the meaning of caste changed much from a rather abstract division to one dividing people into, groups with different responsibilities, functions and rights, i.e., different societies.
2.3 Endogamy as well as measures instituted by the invading group in governing the land might be able to put forth a rationale for development of caste, however fails in providing a reasonable explanation to the fact that we have myriad of castes, each having perceptible divergence in ability when compared with one another.
3 EVOLUTION OF CASTE – A REVIEW
3.1 Whatever the shape, the evolution of caste took; it certainly resulted in a large multitude of castes, each having discernable differences, especially in intellectual ability when compared with one another which further perpetuated a stratified society. Indian society, which welcomed the first invader, was culturally a matured one having certain abstract notions of stratification, encompassing all aspects of life and society. Thus we have categories or different types of, men, women, guests, maidens, horses, dogs, cows, other things like plants, activities like sleeping, other abstractions like friends, enemies and others with further subdivisions leading to myriad of arcane classifications, each possessing unique functional attributes; caste being one such theme of classification.
4 PROGRESSION OF CASTE – AN ANALYSIS
4.1 Before British: Early invasions to India, almost all, resulted in Islamic rule in India which created "a much stronger and much unified elite, which made it difficult for the ordinary masses to resist social changes, particularly in the realm of philosophical choice, religious pluralism and other personal preferences".
5 NATIONALIST MOVEMENTS AND CASTE - AN APPRAISAL
5.1 History of India is replete with stories of social moderation efforts or other rearrangements, that too of a permanent nature, necessitated by a non homogeneous society. In the early times, if Budhism and Jainism heralded such efforts, we have Sikhism of relatively recent origin, all forerunners of social reformists. Raja Rammohan Roy, who could be called the father of Hindu reformation, gave leadership to Hindu revival in modern times. From the on, though many reformers attempted different revival methods, Mahatmaji's views on social struggle stands apart by its unique, interpid approach.
6 CASTE – MY SIDE – The Singularities
While studying the origins of caste system, a mistake, which seems to have crept into all the theories mentioned earlier, is that no doctrine takes the philosophical plane of existence of caste (referring to caste as ‘varna', an abstraction), into account.
Of the myriad of themes Indian ‘puranic' texts contain, caste alone became instituted in later life, and this can be attributed to the ‘singularities' during evolution of social life in India.
6.1 The first singularity is philosophy or the way it is understood.
6.2 Next singularity is the attack by various invaders, almost all of them contributing to changes in social appearance of caste system, due to, their inability in understanding Indian caste system as well as their talent in shaping caste system to suit the needs of governing the vanquished.
6.3 Another singularity took the form of Mahatma Gandhi. Given that the prestige and influence Gandhiji had at that time, his proposals would have resulted in a social revolution as he would have been hoping for, which would led to the upper caste losing their exclusiveness (which caste status brought).
6.4 Communism offered another singularity. ‘Lysenkoism’ and the possibility of inheriting environmentally acquired characteristics proposed by that theory perhaps found its way into the hearts of the ‘reservationists’, providing them with the necessary scientific foundation to ‘reservation’ as a panacea for all social inequalities.
6.5 Next singularity, the most potent of all, is reservation. If we are to consider the fact that people of the upper castes, due to greater opportunities of competition (or opportunities for sharper competition) made available to them as a fallout of reservation, shall be growing further in all faculties at a faster rate, the intellectual gap between people of lower caste and those belonging to upper caste will be on the increase as generations go by, making it difficult to cohabit, at least as equal beings.
Even this could have been introduced in a manner befitting, or as an incentive to, growth. For example, ‘reservations', if limited to jobs needing higher educational or academic result shall be forcing those lower in caste to attain greater standards in learning.
7 CASTE – A SUMMARY
Caste is a relic of dark ages. Only one medicine has been tried so far towards demolition of caste and that is reservation. It is only logical to realize that as the cure is not working, we need to change medication.
